Belated notes after a morning of driver\u2019s ed, some cleaning up after our travels, and starting to prep for our next trip.<\/p>\n
Five months of travel ball came to an end this weekend in Louisville. L\u2019s team went 2\u20132, losing both of their bracket games. It was a very weird weekend.<\/p>\n
Like last week, the courts were filled with teams from all over the country. We saw teams from Georgia, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Texas, Virginia, California, Tennessee, Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, West Virginia, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Alabama, Oklahoma, Iowa, New Jersey, and Nebraska.<\/p>\n
Saturday we started against a team from Michigan. We led by seven at halftime unofficially. I say unofficially because the old dude running the clock and scoreboard had no idea what he was doing. At one point we had seven points even though we had not hit a 3 or a free throw, thus should have been on an even number. Later, when we did hit a 3, he gave both teams two points. Our assistant coach keeps track of stats on an iPad and tried to correct him multiple times, but old man was not having it. So, officially, we were just up four at the half. The dad from the other team who was keeping the official book was no help. He tracked the score with slash marks rather than numbers. So, for example, when L hit a 3-pointer, rather than write down a 3 on his sheet, he wrote down III. Thus he couldn\u2019t reconcile his scoring to our coach\u2019s digital version. Three of us rotate keeping the book when it is our team\u2019s responsibility, and we took turns ripping this guy and discussing our scoring methods when we heard this after the game.<\/p>\n
Anyway\u2026we trailed 45\u201337 with about six minutes left before our girls got their shit together and ripped off a very nice 18\u20132 run to put the game away.<\/p>\n
We were supposed to play a team from Florida Sunday, but they didn\u2019t make the tournament and we won by forfeit, which also clinched first place in our pool. For some reason despite teams being in four team pools, you only played two pool games.<\/p>\n
Weird.<\/p>\n
Our coach asked for a replacement game and we got one against a team from Wichita. Since the game didn\u2019t count in the standings, and they were coming straight from another game, the coaches agreed we would play 16 minute halves with a running clock rather than 14 minute halves with dead ball stops. And their coach asked ours not to press because his girls were tired.<\/p>\n
So, naturally, our team was the one that looked tired and we trailed 18\u20132. Our coach said, \u201cOK, we\u2019re pressing now,\u201d and got it down to two points at halftime. Then someone decided the second half would be just 12 minutes.<\/p>\n
Whatever, we ended up winning by two.<\/p>\n
Weird.<\/p>\n
Onto bracket play. We started with a team from Arkansas. All skinny, white girls. They had won their two games both by 30+. Watching them in warmups, I leaned over to another dad and said, \u201cI hate to jinx us, but this doesn\u2019t look like a team that will beat us by 30.\u201d<\/p>\n
Any guess what happened next?<\/p>\n
Yep, these skinny chicks from the \u2018Saw ran our girls off the court. We hit one 3 in the first half. They missed one, going 7\u20138. We were down 35 at one point. But, hey, we got it down to 29 so I wasn\u2019t wrong!<\/p>\n
Their coach was a true piece of work. She ranted and raved the entire game. At halftime she screamed at her girls like they were down 15 not up 15. She yelled at our dad who was keeping the book when he tried to help her get her roster in. She yelled at the very nice older woman who was running the clock. I think her team played so good because they were genuinely frightened of making her mad and getting murdered.<\/p>\n
Monday morning, our loser\u2019s bracket game, against another team from the same program as the one we beat in game one. Nice little game. We trailed most of the first half but started the second half on an 8\u20131 run to jump up by six. Gave it all back and trailed by 4\u20135\u20136 most of the last six minutes. We put on a surge late but came up just short, losing by two. The real killer was we had a stretch where everyone kept selling out on the offensive boards and letting them get run-outs because no one got back. They scored six points on layups when we had no one within ten feet of the scorer. That\u2019s the ballgame, right there.<\/p>\n
I was keeping the book this game and their coach got super salty at the end of the game. She had been pretty quiet most of the day but in the last five minutes started screaming about every call. When her team was late coming out of a timeout and ref put the ball on the floor and started counting, she kept yelling \u201cThat\u2019s fucked up!\u201d over and over. When we fouled to put them on the line, she was all over the ref about how it was an intentional foul. She would not let up. The ref warned her multiple times before she finally walked away but kept yapping. Later we decided it would have been hilarious if she got T\u2019ed up in the last 10 seconds of a two-point game and we won because she was an idiot.<\/p>\n
Alas\u2026<\/p>\n
L did ok. Her best game was that last one, when she scored nine and had three assists and two steals. She scored 4, 7, and 5 in the other three games. She hit a couple threes but otherwise all of her scoring continued to be by finishing tough drives. She was, again, pissed that her team struggles because half the players don\u2019t know the plays. She has basically told me she doesn\u2019t care where she plays next year, as long as it\u2019s on a team that practices. Once again it was glaringly obvious that every team we played gets regular practice time together. The close wins would have been more comfortable, I think we could have hung with that Arkansas team, and we win the last game if we practice a couple times a week.<\/p>\n
Not the best ending for the team. I see some real growth in L\u2019s game. Her finishing has gotten a lot better. Her defense has improved. Her free throws were much improved until the last two weeks. She actually airballed one on Monday. Yikes. We need to keep working on the jumper and her being better with both hands when facing tough defenders.<\/p>\n
She had her last CHS weight lifting session of the summer today, has her last open gym tomorrow. They\u2019ll take a few weeks off and in late August probably start doing some morning open gyms. After we get back from vacation we\u2019ll figure out if she\u2019s going to do any private work with teammates like she did in June, or we focus on individual workouts.<\/p>\n
We had a couple hours to kill between games Sunday so a couple dads and I checked out the feature court, where the semifinals of the U\u201316 tournament were taking place. There were bleachers on one side and double rows of chairs for college coaches. When we walked up there was a game between a team from Ohio and one from Colorado going on. There were so many college coaches there that the IU head coach had to stand next to us since all the seats were taken. Eventually she got away from us schmucks.<\/p>\n
We also saw coaches from Syracuse, USC, UCLA, Cal, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Alabama, Tennessee, Louisville, and Wisconsin.<\/p>\n
I know I\u2019ve shared this before, but it is really incredible watching these high-level games. Teams will run out 3\u20134 girls who are well over six feet tall. They can all shoot, rebound, and get up-and-down the court insanely fast.<\/p>\n
Later we watched a team from Oakland that is sponsored by Jason Kidd. Bradley Beal had teams there. Good to see those guys supporting the women\u2019s game!<\/p>\n
I forgot to mention last week that we finally stayed at decent hotels. In Cincinnati we were in a Courtyard and you would have thought we were in a luxury resort the way the girls acted when we checked in. Our coach said, \u201cSee, those nights in the bad hotels made them appreciate this more than they did before.\u201d<\/p>\n
True.<\/p>\n
We were in a Hilton Garden Inn this week. It was perfectly fine. We gambled a little by booking there, which was just a couple minutes from the expo center where the tournament took place. It was not on the official hotel list, so we didn\u2019t have an approved reservation number when we pre-registered the girls for the tournament. When they checked in to get their tournament badges, they had to show proof of lodging. I nervously stood to the side with another team dad while our daughters checked in, waiting to get called over and be asked to pay the \u201copt out fee\u201d but they both got their badges and we hustled out.<\/p>\n
Again, big fucking racket. It cost $70 to get in for the weekend, a bottled soda was $5, parking was $12 per day. And then they want you to stay only at the mediocre hotels that are on their list. We decided that\u2019s why our hotel wasn\u2019t on the \u201capproved\u201d list: there was a free shuttle so you didn\u2019t have to pay for parking.<\/p>\n
Well, two weekends in a row that were monumental for news regarding our electoral process. Where last week\u2019s news was an unwelcome surprise, Sunday\u2019s news that President Biden was dropping out of the race was the exact opposite. It seemed inevitable and probably best for everyone. We tend to avoid talking politics in our AAU parent group, but this news had us cautiously discussing it, mostly regarding the historical ramifications rather than what we thought of any of the candidates involved.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know that Biden\u2019s move saves the Democrats\u2019 hopes this fall, but it for sure helps them. I think he\u2019s a good person and that his presidency will generally be regarded as decent. He did some big things that benefitted a lot of people, including many who didn\u2019t vote for him in 2020 and had zero chance of voting for him this year. But he inherited a disaster of an economy on the heels of an insurrection designed to overthrow our democracy. All his big projects, while good in the long term, may have been ill timed given the health of the economy, extending the inflationary period beyond the Covid days. Then again, our economy was so jacked that maybe anything any president did would have had as many negative effects as positive ones as we tried to get supply back in sync with demand.<\/p>\n
Now we just have to hope Kamala is up for the fight that is ahead. JD Vance has already rolled out the lazy \u201cshe\u2019s not grateful enough\u201d line that tends to get attached to women and minorities. I\u2019m sure that\u2019s going to be repeated constantly over the next four months. Fortunately, she is facing a horrible human being that most of the country does not like. Seems like a low bar but we failed to clear it eight years ago and nearly tripped over it four years ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Belated notes after a morning of driver\u2019s ed, some cleaning up after our travels, and starting to prep for our next trip. Kid Hoops Five months of travel ball came to an end this weekend in Louisville. L\u2019s team went 2\u20132, losing both of their bracket games. It was a very weird weekend. Like last week, the courts were filled with teams from all over the country. We saw teams from Georgia, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Texas, Virginia, California, Tennessee, Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, West Virginia, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Alabama, Oklahoma, Iowa, New Jersey, and Nebraska. Saturday we started against a team from Michigan. We led by seven at halftime unofficially. I say unofficially because the old dude running the clock and scoreboard had no idea what he was doing. At one point we had seven points even though we had not hit a 3 or a free throw, thus should have been on an even number. Later, when we did hit a 3, he gave both teams two points. Our assistant coach keeps track of stats on an iPad and tried to correct him multiple times, but old man was not having it. So, officially, we were just up four at the half. The dad from the other team who was keeping the official book was no help. He tracked the score with slash marks rather than numbers. So, for example, when L hit a 3-pointer, rather than write down a 3 on his sheet, he wrote down III. Thus he couldn\u2019t reconcile his scoring to our coach\u2019s digital version. Three of us rotate keeping the book when it is our team\u2019s responsibility, and we took turns ripping this guy and discussing our scoring methods when we heard this after the game. Anyway\u2026we trailed 45\u201337 with about six minutes left before our girls got their shit together and ripped off a very nice 18\u20132 run to put the game away. We were supposed to play a team from Florida Sunday, but they didn\u2019t make the tournament and we won by forfeit, which also clinched first place in our pool. For some reason despite teams being in four team pools, you only played two pool games. Weird. Our coach asked for a replacement game and we got one against a team from Wichita. Since the game didn\u2019t count in the standings, and they were coming straight from another game, the coaches agreed we would play 16 minute halves with a running clock rather than 14 minute halves with dead ball stops. And their coach asked ours not to press because his girls were tired. So, naturally, our team was the one that looked tired and we trailed 18\u20132. Our coach said, \u201cOK, we\u2019re pressing now,\u201d and got it down to two points at halftime. Then someone decided the second half would be just 12 minutes. Whatever, we ended up winning by two. Weird. Onto bracket play. We started with a team from Arkansas. All skinny, white girls. They had won their two games both by 30+. Watching them in warmups, I leaned over to another dad and said, \u201cI hate to jinx us, but this doesn\u2019t look like a team that will beat us by 30.\u201d Any guess what happened next? Yep, these skinny chicks from the \u2018Saw ran our girls off the court. We hit one 3 in the first half. They missed one, going 7\u20138. We were down 35 at one point. But, hey, we got it down to 29 so I wasn\u2019t wrong! Their coach was a true piece of work. She ranted and raved the entire game. At halftime she screamed at her girls like they were down 15 not up 15. She yelled at our dad who was keeping the book when he tried to help her get her roster in. She yelled at the very nice older woman who was running the clock. I think her team played so good because they were genuinely frightened of making her mad and getting murdered. Monday morning, our loser\u2019s bracket game, against another team from the same program as the one we beat in game one. Nice little game. We trailed most of the first half but started the second half on an 8\u20131 run to jump up by six. Gave it all back and trailed by 4\u20135\u20136 most of the last six minutes. We put on a surge late but came up just short, losing by two. The real killer was we had a stretch where everyone kept selling out on the offensive boards and letting them get run-outs because no one got back. They scored six points on layups when we had no one within ten feet of the scorer. That\u2019s the ballgame, right there. I was keeping the book this game and their coach got super salty at the end of the game. She had been pretty quiet most of the day but in the last five minutes started screaming about every call. When her team was late coming out of a timeout and ref put the ball on the floor and started counting, she kept yelling \u201cThat\u2019s fucked up!\u201d over and over. When we fouled to put them on the line, she was all over the ref about how it was an intentional foul. She would not let up. The ref warned her multiple times before she finally walked away but kept yapping. Later we decided it would have been hilarious if she got T\u2019ed up in the last 10 seconds of a two-point game and we won because she was an idiot. Alas\u2026 L did ok. Her best game was that last one, when she scored nine and had three assists and two steals. She scored 4, 7, and 5 in the other three games. She hit a couple threes but otherwise all of her scoring continued to be by finishing tough drives. She was, again, pissed that her team struggles because half the players don\u2019t know the plays. She has basically told me she doesn\u2019t care where she plays next year, as long as it\u2019s on a team that practices. Once again it was glaringly obvious that every team we played gets regular practice time together. The close wins would have been more comfortable, I think we could have hung with that Arkansas team, and we win the last game if we practice a couple times a week. Not the best ending for the team. I see some real growth in L\u2019s game. Her finishing has gotten a lot better. Her defense has improved. Her free throws were much improved until the last two weeks. She actually airballed one on Monday. Yikes. We need to keep working on the jumper and her being better with both hands when facing tough defenders. She had her last CHS weight lifting session of the summer today, has her last open gym tomorrow. They\u2019ll take a few weeks off and in late August probably start doing some morning open gyms. After we get back from vacation we\u2019ll figure out if she\u2019s going to do any private work with teammates like she did in June, or we focus on individual workouts. Feature Court We had a couple hours to kill between games Sunday so a couple dads and I checked out the feature court, where the semifinals of the U\u201316 tournament were taking place. There were bleachers on one side and double rows of chairs for college coaches. When we walked up there was a game between a team from Ohio and one from Colorado going on. There were so many college coaches there that the IU head coach had to stand next to us since all the seats were taken. Eventually she got away from us schmucks. We also saw coaches from Syracuse, USC, UCLA, Cal, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Alabama, Tennessee, Louisville, and Wisconsin. I know I\u2019ve shared this before, but it is really incredible watching these high-level games. Teams will run out 3\u20134 girls who are well over six feet tall. They can all shoot, rebound, and get up-and-down the court insanely fast. Later we watched a team from Oakland that is sponsored by Jason Kidd. Bradley Beal had teams there. Good to see those guys supporting the women\u2019s game! Hotels I forgot to mention last week that we finally stayed at decent hotels. In Cincinnati we were in a Courtyard and you would have thought we were in a luxury resort the way the girls acted when we checked in. Our coach said, \u201cSee, those nights in the bad hotels made them appreciate this more than they did before.\u201d True. We were in a Hilton Garden Inn this week. It was perfectly fine. We gambled a little by booking there, which was just a couple minutes from the expo center where the tournament took place. It was not on the official hotel list, so we didn\u2019t have an approved reservation number when we pre-registered the girls for the tournament. When they checked in to get their tournament badges, they had to show proof of lodging. I nervously stood to the side with another team dad while our daughters checked in, waiting to get called over and be asked to pay the \u201copt out fee\u201d but they both got their badges and we hustled out. Again, big fucking racket. It cost $70 to get in for the weekend, a bottled soda was $5, parking was $12 per day. And then they want you to stay only at the mediocre hotels that are on their list. We decided that\u2019s why our hotel wasn\u2019t on the \u201capproved\u201d list: there was a free shuttle so you didn\u2019t have to pay for parking. Democracy Well, two weekends in a row that were monumental for news regarding our electoral process. Where last week\u2019s news was an unwelcome surprise, Sunday\u2019s news that President Biden was dropping out of the race was the exact opposite. It seemed inevitable and probably best for everyone. We tend to avoid talking politics in our AAU parent group, but this news had us cautiously discussing it, mostly regarding the historical ramifications rather than what we thought of any of the candidates involved. I don\u2019t know that Biden\u2019s move saves the Democrats\u2019 hopes this fall, but it for sure helps them. I think he\u2019s a good person and that his presidency will generally be regarded as decent. He did some big things that benefitted a lot of people, including many who didn\u2019t vote for him in 2020 and had zero chance of voting for him this year. But he inherited a disaster of an economy on the heels of an insurrection designed to overthrow our democracy. All his big projects, while good in the long term, may have been ill timed given the health of the economy, extending the inflationary period beyond the Covid days. Then again, our economy was so jacked that maybe anything any president did would have had as many negative effects as positive ones as we tried to get supply back in sync with demand. Now we just have to hope Kamala is up for the fight that is ahead. JD Vance has already rolled out the lazy \u201cshe\u2019s not grateful enough\u201d line that tends to get attached to women and minorities. I\u2019m sure that\u2019s going to be repeated constantly over the next four months. Fortunately, she is facing a horrible human being that most of the country does not like. Seems like a low bar but we failed to clear it eight years ago and nearly tripped over it four years ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[31,32,22,30],"class_list":["post-12869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-basketball","tag-politics","tag-travel","tag-youth-sports"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12869"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12869\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12871,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12869\/revisions\/12871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}